Chronic Health Threats Globally

::Farhana Choudhury::

According to the World Health Statistics 2011 released by the WHO revealed an increasing number of countries are facing a double burden of disease as the prevalence of risk factors for chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart diseases and cancers increase and many countries still struggle to reduce maternal and child deaths caused by infectious diseases, for the Millennium Development Goals.
Non communicable diseases such heart diseases, stroke, diabetes and cancer, now make up two-thirds of all deaths globally, due to the population aging and the spread of risk factors associated with globalisation and urbanisation. The control of risk factors such as tobacco use, sedentary lifestyle, unhealthy diet and excessive use of alcohol becomes more critical. The latest WHO figures showed that about 4 out of 10 men and 1 in 11 women are using tobacco and about 1 in 8 adults is obese.
In addition many developing countries continue to battle health issues such as pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria that are most likely to kill children under the age of five. In 2009, 40% of all child deaths were among newborns (aged 28 days or less). 
• Child mortality declined at 2.7% per year since 2000, twice as fast as during the 1990s (1.3%). Mortality among children under five years fell from 12.4 million in 1990 to 8.1 million in 2009.
• Maternal mortality declined at 3.3% per year since 2000, almost twice as fast in the decade after 2000 than during the 1990s (2%). The number of women dying as a result of complications during pregnancy and childbirth has decreased from 546,000 in 1990 to 358,000 in 2008.• This evidence really shows that no country in the world can address health from either an infectious disease perspective or a non communicable disease one. Everyone must develop a health system that addresses the full range of the health threats in both areas.” says Ties Boerma, Director of WHO’s Department of Health Statistics and Informatics.
At the sixty-fourth World Health Assembly held on 17 May 2011, Speakers addressing the assembly were, Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister of Bangladesh and Bill Gates, Co-chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill Gates renewed his commitment to fighting disease. He thanked WHO and its Member States for their continued leadership, and called for increased political and financial support for vaccines. He said with increased investment in vaccines and immunization, by 2020, we can prevent 10 million deaths.“The greatest asset of every country is the energy and talent of its people. Disease saps that energy and squanders that talent. Repeated intestinal infections stunt children’s growth and reduce their cognitive development. Meningitis can cause permanent neurologic disability. Malaria prevents people from being productive; over a lifetime, high rates of malaria cause substantially reduced earnings. That’s why vaccines are one of the best investments we can make in the future: healthy people drive thriving economies. As we free billions of people from the relentless burden of sickness and death will unleash more human potential than ever before”He said, “Meningitis strikes with frightening speed. A perfectly healthy child can be playing with friends one minute and literally be dead a few hours later. In 1996, the only weapon against meningitis was barely useful at all, a short-lasting vaccine that wasn’t effective among young children. Health officials used it to control outbreaks that were already raging, so they called it “medicine after death.” They demanded a better vaccine that could prevent outbreaks. The WHO and an organization called PATH formed the Meningitis Vaccine Project in 2001. The partners set a target price of 50 cents for the vaccine, which would make it affordable.”
“At the Gates Foundation, our goal is to spur innovation on health problems. Our priorities are your priorities: to make motherhood safer; to ensure that newborns survive their first 30 days, to provide children with a nutritious diet. We see what you see everyday – that diseases like HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria can destroy communities. 
Vaccines are an extremely elegant technology. They can be inexpensive, they are easy to deliver, and they are proven to protect children lifelong from disease.  In this decade, we can achieve a lot. Early in this decade, we will eradicate polio. By the end of the decade, five or six new vaccines will be available to all children of the world. And, crucially, every country in the world will have built a delivery system made to get vaccines to every last child”
Sheikh Hasina in her speech stated “I believe non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like diabetes, cancer, cardio-vascular diseases, stroke, mental health, thalassemia and autism should get due importance. NCD accounts for 60% of global mortality with 80% in developing countries. NCD is responsible for 61% of diseases in Bangladesh. Incidence of mental problems, thalassemia and autism are also increasing worldwide. In most developing countries, these are neglected.”Sheikh Hasina specifically highlighted Bangladesh’s maternal mortality rate, which plummeted 66 percent in ten years. Sheikh Hasina also touched on health and development targets she has set for Bangladesh to become a middle-income nation within the next ten years, proclaiming “health is wealth.” “In different parts of the world there exists inequities and uneven well-being. Moreover, there is urgent need for safe and effective family planning for about 215 million women of the world who lack it. In Bangladesh, although we have reduced our total fertility rate from 2.7 in 2007 to 2.47 now, and satisfactorily improved contraceptive acceptance rate, the rate of unmet family planning needs is still 18%”“I hope the global community would continue their support to our effort to make population an asset instead of being a burden. Globally more than 8 million children die before their 5th birthday, and 350 000 women die each year from complications during pregnancy or childbirth. Almost all of them, about 99% are from the developing world. We appreciate that WHO is helping improve the situation of maternal and child health”The report also shows that more money is being spent on health and people can expect to live longer (life expectancy in 2009 was 68 years, up from 64 years in 1990); but the gap in health spending between low- and high-income countries remains very large.
• In low-income countries, per capita, health expenditure is an estimated US$ 32 (or about 5.4% of gross domestic product) and in high-income countries it is US$ 4590 (or about 11% of gross domestic product).
• High-income countries have, per capita, on average 10 times more doctors, 12 times more nurses and midwives and 30 times more dentists than low-income countries.
• Virtually all deliveries of babies in high-income countries are attended by skilled health personnel; but this is the case for only 40% of deliveries in low-income countries.
World Health Statistics 2011 is an annual report based on more than 100 health indicators reported by WHO’s 193 Member States and other reliable sources. These data provide a snapshot of the global health situation and trends. However, timely, accurate health information is hard to obtain in some parts of the world, because the country health information systems are weak.